Dispatch from torture nation
by digby
Here’s a video of a police officer spotting someone walking down the road, pulling over, instantly demanding the person submit to him or get tasered, refusing to tell him why he’s being detained, then tasering him into submission making him scream in pain, when he passively resists.
And then the officer arrests him for resisting arrest.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Now the whole thing has become a political issue in the town. The police chief originally said the video was egregious and appeared to have violated policy. Then she reversed herself. And now she has been placed on leave:
The police chief here will be paid to stay at home while investigators sort out how and why she returned an officer to work not long after the chief had called the cop’s use-of-force on a suspect “egregious,” the city manager said.
Opal Mauldin-Robertson placed Chief Cheryl Wilson on administrative leave on Thursday. The city manager faulted Wilson for being “inconsistent with agreed upon directives” between her and city officials.
Wilson, who had confirmed Friday morning that she was on leave, did not respond to a call seeking comment after Mauldin-Robertson’s 5-minute-long Friday evening news conference. Wilson’s attorney also didn’t respond to a request for comment after he had said Friday morning that he was waiting to hear why Wilson was on leave.
Mauldin-Robertson said that the next day, Wilson told her, Assistant City Manager Rona Stringfellow and City Attorney Bob Hager that the incident was “serious, and appeared to, at a minimum, violate our policy.”
Fine was reassigned pending an administrative review about whether he justifiably used his Taser. The department’s Taser instructor later said he used it appropriately, Mauldin-Robertson said.
Two weeks later, Wilson met with the mayor and Mauldin-Robertson to watch the video together. Mauldin-Robertson said Wilson agreed to keep them updated.
But after a Dallas County prosecutor and a Texas Ranger both said the officer was justified in stopping Tucker, Wilson returned Fine to his regular duty. Mauldin-Robertson said Friday the investigation had not been completed.
Mauldin-Robertson said Wilson, who became chief in 2013 after a career with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, waited five days to tell her the officer had been exonerated and returned to regular duty.
Mauldin-Robertson said Wilson’s decision to return Fine to the job “without any actions or recourse caused some questions and concerns regarding the completeness and independent review of this matter.” She said Wilson would remain on leave until those questions could be answered.
Mauldin-Robertson then ignored reporters’ questions after the news conference.
What appears to have happened is that the Chief understood immediately that this was a bad stop and an egregious use of the taser but came under pressure from her department to let it go. And the city officials aren’t having it.
Both the chief and the city manager are African American women so it appears that this is as much a matter of the thin blue line in general as it is systemic racism.
Cops use tasers willy nilly on everyone, we know that, and it’s horrifying for me to watch anyone screaming in pain during a police encounter when they are presenting no threat to the cop or it’s clear that the situation could have been dealt without shooting a human being full of electricity to force their compliance.
But I cannot imagine how galling it to be a black person walking down the street, minding your own business, doing nothing wrong and have a white man run up and demand that you instantly submit to him on demand, without explanation for no reason. It’s true that in the Jim Crow south for centuries any white man could do this and now it’s only people in uniform who are allowed this “privilege”, but the historical resonance is truly striking. I’m sure that African Americans feel this in their bones.
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